Hassan wins N.H. governor's race

Wednesday

Nov 7, 2012 at 3:15 AMNov 7, 2012 at 10:19 AM

From Staff and Wire Reportsnews@fosters.com

DOVER — Former state Senate Majority Leader Maggie Hassan will keep New Hampshire governor's seat in Democratic control after she beat Republican Ovide Lamontagne, an opponent she said was too extreme for the state.

With Tuesday's win, Hassan is in line to succeed John Lynch, the governor since 2005 who served an unprecedented four two-year terms and is retiring from elective office.

Hassan's campaign stressed the need to repair damage done by the Republican Legislature in its last budget, particularly by restoring deep cuts to public colleges and the state's hospitals. She said the way to grow the economy is to invest in education so business has the work force it needs.

Lamontagne had claimed Hassan was a tax-and-spend liberal who would grow government.

Both Hassan, 54, of Exeter, and Lamontagne, 55, of Manchester, are business attorneys and campaigned on the need to grow the economy and jobs.

Hassan argued education was the key and said she would reverse the $50 million in annual cuts the Legislature made to the University System of New Hampshire in the last budget. She would help pay for the aid by raising the cigarette tax and hiring auditors to ensure businesses pay their taxes.

She also would double the state's business research and development tax credit.

On a night characterized by narrow election margins, the race for New Hampshire governor was among the first to reach a definitive conclusion. The Associated Press was calling the competition in Hassan's favor by about 9 p.m.

Unofficial vote tallies compiled by WMUR showed Hassan holding a lead of 55 percent to Lamontagne's 43 percent, with about half of the state's voting precincts reporting. Libertarian candidate John Babiarz received about 3 percent of the vote.

Taking a page out of Lynch's book, Hassan struck a tone of bipartisanship during her victory speech at The Puritan Backroom in Manchester. She pledged to reach out to Democrats, Independents and Republicans alike while in office.

“The campaign season is now behind us,” Hassan said, evoking cheers and whistles from an enthusiastic crowd, “and so it is time to focus on finding the common ground and compromise that will result in progress for all of our citizens.”

Dover resident Jonathan Swiger, a 24-year-old Hassan supporter, said he voted for the Exeter Democrat in hopes that she will advance the work started by Lynch during the past eight years.

“Gov. Lynch has been really good, and I would like to see someone try and carry on the name of a good leader and add their own changes to it, instead of someone who's going to take all of the things that have been working so well and just try to drastically change them,” he said.

On the campaign trail, Lamontagne proposed cutting the state's tax on business profits from 8.5 percent to 8 percent over two years by finding spending to cut to offset the loss of an estimated $27 million in revenue. He also proposed new tax credits to help business and promised to ease regulations.

Lamontagne proudly touted his conservatism and embraced support from New Hampshire's loosely organized Tea Party as matching his views of limited government and low taxes. He took New Hampshire's traditional pledge to veto a personal income or general sales tax. The state has neither.

Lamontagne argued Hassan would support an income or sales tax — despite her pledge to also veto them. He promised not to raise taxes a single dime.

Hassan criticized Lamontagne for promising to spend more money on services for the disabled and hospital aid without saying where he would make cuts to pay for the spending.

Lamontagne, a Catholic, strongly opposes abortion and gay marriage, though he did not emphasize his support for imposing limits on abortion or repealing New Hampshire's same-sex marriage law in his campaign. He supports replacing gay marriage with civil unions for heterosexual and same-sex couples but doesn't support invalidating existing same-sex marriages. He also supports exempting religious organizations from contraceptive mandates in insurance coverage.

Hassan highlighted her support for the rights of workers to unionize, for women to have access to abortions and birth control and for gays to marry. Hassan was instrumental in the Senate passing the state's law legalizing same-sex unions in 2009. An effort to repeal it fell short this year.

For Somersworth retiree Paul Chabot, an 81-year-old who voted for Hassan, the conversation around so-called “women's issues” played a prominent role in his election day decision.

“I don't like Ovide's views,” Chabot said, “especially on women.”

Newmarket resident Stephen Schaefer, 60, said his vote for Hassan was motivated in part by the volume of negative attack ads leveled by Lamontagne against his Democrat opponent.

“That was such a dirty campaign on his side,” Schaefer said. “I just wouldn't want him in office. I just had a higher level of trust for her, and went with her for that reason.”

In an email sent shortly before 11:30 p.m., New Hampshire Democratic Party Chairman Raymond Buckley said the party had achieved “incredible victories,” in Tuesday's election. He hailed Hassan's win over Lamontagne as a “clear sign that people of New Hampshire have rejected the extremist policies of Ovide Lamontagne and Bill O'Brien's Tea Party legislature.”

“I am very excited at the prospect of working with Governor-elect Maggie Hassan to strengthen New Hampshire's economy so that our businesses can create new jobs for our families,” he wrote. “Governor-elect Hassan will keep New Hampshire moving forward, with an innovation to create jobs and help businesses grow.”

The race was Hassan's first try for governor and Lamontagne's second bid. He lost to Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, now a U.S. senator, in 1996. He also ran unsuccessful campaigns for Congress in 1992 and U.S. Senate in 2010.

Hassan lost her first bid for state Senate in 2002, but won the seat in the following election. She was defeated during a Republican sweep in 2010.

Another group that offered early praise for Hassan on Tuesday night was The Human Rights Campaign, which called Hassan a “proequality governor-elect.” HRC is a civil rights organization working to achieve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equality, according to the group.

“Governor-elect Hassan's victory is vital to preserving New Hampshire's popular marriage equality law and we thank her for her continued commitment to the LGBT community,” reads a statement released by the group. “She will no doubt continue the great work of Gov. Lynch in ensuring that all loving and committed couples in New Hampshire are able to experience the joys of marriage.”

Foster's staff writer Jim Haddadin and Holly Ramer of The Associated Press contributed to this report.